


Pikes Peak, July 4, 1901

by whatsinausername



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: (Both their relationship and the bonfire), (they're both background though), Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, I finally get to use one of my favorite obscure historical events, Morning Cuddles, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Slow Burn, literally all the fluff I could fit into a story about burning shit up, you don't know how big this is for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:03:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9144013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsinausername/pseuds/whatsinausername
Summary: On the Fourth of July, 1901, the biggest bonfire in the history of the United States was lit from the summit of Pikes Peak, the tallest mountain in Colorado. The blaze could be seen in neighboring states, and lots of people assumed that the mountain had just been a dormant volcano all that time. (This part is true.)On the third of July, 1901, Jyn Erso wakes up to the sound of her old friend Bodhi throwing rocks at her window. He and his weird friends need her help. (This part is not true.)





	1. Bonfire of the Vanities

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write about the Pikes Peak Bonfire of 1901 for months, ever since I learned about it, but I didn't know how. Then I saw Rogue One, and I just had to write my favorite rebels into this story with smaller stakes but almost as many explosions. Hope you enjoy!

On July 3rd, 1901, at around 10:17 p.m., Jyn was very much ready to go to bed. Her back ached, with that lower-spine-and-shoulder ache you get when you have a desk job and very bad posture. Her feet ached, from those damn shoes she had to wear all day, and from walking the second half of the way home without those shoes. Her brain ached, too, because Professor Guerrara had given her more calculations to do than usual that day. He hadn’t exactly said that it was because he was going to come into the lab the next day even though the university was closed for the Fourth, but he hadn’t needed to.

Jyn didn’t like being a computer, but she didn’t hate it either, and that was, she supposed, the best she could hope for. At least she wasn’t one of the girls at the telephone operating station, who had to listen to idiot strangers—who had forgotten the number, but I can tell you their first name and the color of their house, would that help?—all day and somehow not bust a major artery. At least she was using her brain, doing important work. Well, Professor Guerrara was doing important work. But he couldn’t do it without her, and that, Jyn supposed, was almost the same thing.

It was still exhausting, though, and as Jyn changed into her pajamas (a flannel men’s set, which she had told the cashier were “for her husband” as if they didn’t both know the truth) she said a little thank-you to the universe that the next day was a holiday. She would be able to sleep as long as she wanted, make flapjacks in the morning, and then have the day to herself. Maybe she would go to the library, she thought as she lay down and drew the covers around her. Maybe in the evening she would get a not-quite-stale cookie from the baker just before it closed, and eat it on the roof of her tenement and watch the fireworks fade into stardust...

Jyn might have been just-barely asleep when a rattling tap on her window jerked her awake. She barely had time to register shock before the extreme irritation set in. What in the damn hell was someone doing at her window, waking her up?

She considered simply not getting up, and had nearly decided on it when another something dinged on the glass. Jyn sighed as loudly and aggressively as she could (even though no one was there to hear it) and tossed back her quilt. She stomped to the window, threw it open, and yelled “Who do you think you -- Rook?”

For two stories below her was Bodhi Rook from night school, surrounded by a small gaggle of strangers and smiling up at her through the darkness in that gentle way he had that didn’t match their circumstances at all. “Wotcher, Erso,” he called, his accent just as undiminished as hers was, even after years in the States. “How long has it been?”

“Lay off with that, how long’s it been, what are you doing here?”

Bodhi spread his arms to indicate the other men he was with. “We’re on a mission and we need your particular expertise!”

“I’m not an expert in anything, Rook.”

“We need someone to run some numbers for us, alright, and you’re the best number-runner I know.”

“We took all the same math classes, Rook.”

“I would have failed Calculus without you and you know it.”

Jyn couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. She also couldn’t believe that any of her neighbors hadn’t stuck their heads out a window to tell them to shut their traps. It was only a matter of time. “What the blazes do you need Calculus for,” she called, “in the middle of the night before my day off?”

Bodhi hesitated, but one of his friends answered for him. He was tall, dark-haired, and Jyn thought he might have had really big brown eyes, and he looked up at her and whispered in a whisper that still echoed all across the empty street:

“We’re going to set fire to the top of the mountain.”

It was then that Jyn gave up on getting any sleep that night.

\---

As they all strode down the lamp-lit streets toward the edge of the city, Jyn feeling a bit silly in her jacket and pajamas but still better than if she’d had to put on a dress, Bodhi introduced her to his group (crew? guild? squadron?):

There were Chirrut and Baze, two Chinese men who seemed joined at the hip. They had worked “on the railroads,” Baze said vaguely. Chirrut was blind, he told her, from some long-ago explosion. He didn’t seem to need any help getting around. Baze helped him anyway. Jyn liked the both of them.

There was Kay, a man who Jyn thought might have had pale skin and straw-blond hair, but she couldn’t tell because he was covered head-to-toe in darkly metallic coal dust. He wore a miner’s hat and rarely said anything that wasn’t rude. Jyn didn’t quite like him.

And finally there was the dark-haired man, who did indeed have really big brown eyes, and was called Cassian. He didn’t say much, but when he did, everyone listened, which made Jyn think he was somehow the leader. He had a Mexican accent and a grim expression. Jyn wasn’t sure what to think about him.

It wasn’t clear to her how Bodhi had met two unemployed railroad workers, a miner, and a… Cassian, but before she could ask him, Bodhi began explaining their schedule, such as it was:

Step 1: Drive a load of fuel and combustibles to the top of Pikes Peak. Kay had friends who could provide both the trucks and the many containers of oil and coal.

Step 2: Set them off. Chirrut and Maze apparently had experience with the mechanics of such a thing.

There did not appear to be a step 3.

“So what,” Jyn puffed, a bit out of breath from the pace Cassian was setting for the the group, “is your job?”

“Since I work at the Sheriff’s office,” Bodhi replied, “and all of the police know me, I’m going to present a very convincing excuse if we run into an officer of the law.” He puffed out his chest, but Jyn knew him well enough to see that there was reservation, anxiety even, in his eyes. 

“So what do you need me for?” she asked.

“You,” Bodhi said, “are going to work your math magic and tell us how much oil and wood we can set off without killing ourselves, as well as what shape we should pile it all in to get the tallest, brightest flame possible. Also, we want it to burn all day tomorrow, so we need to figure out the numbers for that, as well.”

Jyn sputtered. “And why haven’t any of you thought of all this before now?”

Bodhi shrugged sheepishly. “Didn’t occur to us until we started piling the lumber at the summit this afternoon.”

Men, Jyn thought to herself. Out loud, she said, “So you want me to draw up some sort of schematic for how to arrange the fuel? And a schedule for keeping it burning all day?”

“That’s right,” came Cassian’s voice from up ahead, “a plan.” He turned a bit to look at them and made eye contact with Jyn. Did he smile at her, very slightly? She couldn’t quite tell in the darkness.

“Because we may be committing arson and vandalism on government land,” Kay said, “but we wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.” 

\---

As they entered the national park surrounding Pikes Peak, Bodhi revealed that he had brought a nice, thick notepad and several pencils for Jyn to work with. He and Kay told her how much lumber was already at the peak, how many barrels of oil, pounds of coal, and cases of red fire they had access to, and how much more wood and fuel they could conceivably “acquire” before the morning. 

Sitting down didn’t seem to be an option, so Jyn did her best to walk and write at the same time. It wasn’t easy. The trail was covered in stones and roots, and she could barely see anything this far from the city lights. 

It wasn’t long before she hit a wall in her calculations. “Um,” she called to no one in particular, “I don’t think I’ll be able to actually figure anything unless I see the peak in person.”

“That’s why we’re going there now,” Cassian called back to her.

Jyn’s stomach turned over, and she looked up at the black mountain, which loomed 14,000 feet above them in the darkness. “We’re not,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry, “we’re not hiking up on foot, are we?”

“Of course not,” Cassian snapped. “We’re taking the cog train.”

Jyn almost asked whether the cog train even ran at this hour. But she knew it didn’t, and she knew that one of these men would have some way to make it run.

\---

It turned out to be Kay. He opened up some panel, did something to some wire, and they were off, the red trolley chugging along the track and winding slowly through the forest, up the mountain.

Jyn and her feet were ecstatic at finally having somewhere to sit. Tearing her eyes away from the view of the stars weaving in and out of the silhouetted trees, she balanced the notepad on her be-flannelled knee and started a new sketch. She had been to the summit once, years ago, and knew that there was a sizeable flat area. The wood and coal would probably best be stacked in a simple pyramid -- the real problem was how they would light the oil, and later add more fuel, without anyone burning themselves to a crisp -- maybe a long-armed claw -- maybe --

Her thoughts were interrupted by Cassian suddenly sitting on the bench next to her. She deliberately didn’t look up from her notepad, waiting for him to say something the way people who have just sat down next to you usually do.

He didn’t say anything.

They sat in silence, Jyn’s mind racing until she finally came up with something to say. It was a question that she couldn’t quite believe she hadn’t asked yet, and it seemed both trivial and of the utmost importance.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked him.

He finally looked at her, his dark eyes squinting a bit with -- suspicion? amusement? “Why are we doing this, you mean.”

“Well -- I suppose -- yes,” Jyn stammered, “but that doesn’t answer my question.”

Cassian looked at her for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “How do you feel about the Fourth of July?”

“You still haven’t answered--”

Cassian cut her off, raising one eyebrow in just such a way that Jyn stopped and resigned herself to playing along. “It’s okay. A bit performative, a bit disingenuous. But I like the fireworks.”

“A bit disingenuous.” Cassian let out a puff of air that could almost pass for a laugh. “Never in my life have I felt independent on this Independence Day. Neither has Kay, who breathes in that black dust every day so others can warm their homes. Neither have Chirrut or Baze, who built railways so the trains could cross the continent but now cannot get jobs because of where they are from. Neither has Bodhi, who must compensate for the color of his skin by bowing to the most powerful white man in Colorado Springs.” He looked at her, smirking at the shock frozen on her face. “Tell me, do you feel independent?”

Jyn swallowed hard, trying not to melt under his burning gaze. She could suddenly think of nothing but those awful shoes she had to wear to work. They made her want to cut her feet off. “No,” she whispered.

Cassian finally broke eye contact, turning his head to look out the window, maybe at the stars through the trees. “That is why we are all here. We will beat them at their own game, this game where they burn things to celebrate their freedom, and we will light the very mountain on fire. It will be the biggest, most beautiful thing anyone has ever seen.” He looked back at her. “And we will be free, if only for a day.”

He smiled at her, for real. Jyn couldn’t help but smile back.


	2. My Side of the Mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jyn has a plan.

Jyn didn’t feel safe until they passed the tree line. Every shadow in the forest might have been a police officer, a park ranger, someone waiting in the underbrush to arrest them for hijacking the cog train and conspiring to blow up the tallest mountain in Colorado. What a trial that would be, Jyn thought.

Almost everyone else looked about equally stressed. Bodhi was jiggling his leg rapidly, the way he always had during tests at school. Kay fiddled with the controls at the front of the trolley, even though the train only had one speed and was being guided by the railway. Baze paced around the car, alternating glances out the windows for imagined assailants with glances at Chirrut, who was the only one sitting calmly. Once Baze had stalked around the cabin five or six times, Chirrut smiled, walked over to him, and stopped him in front of the rear window by taking his hand. He murmured something in Baze’s ear, at which Baze grunted. But after that he was still, and the two of them stood at the window together, keeping watch.

Crossing the tree line wasn’t a gradual change but a sudden plunge -- there were trees, and then there weren’t, and the ground was reddish and rocky and empty. But what made Jyn scramble off the bench and over to the front window was the sky. It was suddenly open and clear, and the opposite of empty; more stars than she had ever been able to see under the city lights were strewn across its expanse, glittering brightly. 

Everyone else had gone quiet, too, even Kay. Jyn glanced over at the miner. She saw that his eyes looked almost damp, and she looked away quickly. She could hear Baze describing the view to Chirrut, and she blinked back tears of her own.

After a minute or maybe more, she returned to her seat. Cassian watched her as she sat, had maybe been watching her all along. 

“Why did you run to see the stars?”

Jyn stared back at him. Did he speak only in uncomfortable questions and revolutionary platitudes? “They’re beautiful,” she replied.

“You’ve seen one star, you’ve seen them all.” Cassian leaned back, looking a tad smug.

Jyn felt herself growing angry, over stars of all things. “What, so something can only be beautiful if you’ve never seen it before?”

Cassian held his hands up in casual surrender. “Not at all. But I am not here to gaze at stars.”

Jyn scoffed. “Oh, so you’re not a philistine, you’re just no fun.”

The corners of his mouth turned up a bit, but if he was going to say anything, the train ground to a screeching halt before he could. Seemingly unable to not lead the charge, Cassian rose and strode to the door. Jyn followed, making a mental note to specifically ask Bodhi where he had found this man who blew up mountains and didn’t care for stars.

When she stepped out of the trolley, Jyn made an embarrassing noise, somewhere between a yelp and a grunt, at how cold it was. The air was biting and thin, so that she scrambled both to catch her breath and to close the undone buttons on her jacket. The wind was actually, audibly howling, and Jyn forced her teeth not to chatter as she became aware of every gap and seam in her clothing. They were, after all, halfway to space (or was it a quarter of the way? She would have to look that up later), so Jyn didn’t know what she had expected. 

As the group walked toward the flat expanse of the summit, stumbling periodically over the loose, gray-red gravel, Jyn finally caught sight of the setup. Half of the summit was taken up with what looked like another mountain range in miniature, built from entire trees and hills of firewood that would fill her whole apartment. It was slapdash, chaotic -- branches, trunks, and roots stacked over and over each other at least twenty feet high and fifty feet across. Jyn couldn’t begin to imagine what it would look like on fire, and she realized that she couldn’t wait to find out.

She had reached the plateau without realizing it. She paused, and Bodhi paused with her. “So?” he said, he voice trembling with nervous hope. “Do you think you can figure it all out?”

“Er…” Jyn drew the syllable out as she cast her eyes around, looking for an answer. There was no point in rearranging the wood itself, she saw that now. The fire was going to be massive and unwieldy no matter what. The problem, still, was how they were going to get the barrels of oil onto the pile without barbecuing themselves. If only the kindling had been lower down on the mountain… then they could have --

Jyn’s eyes lighted upon something she hadn’t noticed before. Was it -- ? She took off, running towards the far side of the wood pile, hoping against hope that it was what it thought she was, Bodhi puffing behind her. She reached the far side and looked up, her face breaking into a smile. It was a rock formation, a mound that rose just barely above the tallest point in the woodpile. It looked to be easily climbable, with a spot to stand at the top. Jyn punched the air and let out a whoop.

“Jyn, what --”

“A ramp!” she cried, reaching up to grab Bodhi by the shoulders. “We can build a ramp from the top of that outcropping to the woodpile, and roll the oil barrels down it! It’ll be so easy, and the roller should have time to get well away before the blast --”

Bodhi laughed in relief and swept her up into a hug. Jyn wasn’t a hugger -- or maybe she was just out of practice -- but she let him, and it was nice.

As Bodhi released her, she noticed Cassian emerging from behind the woodpile, looking decidedly less excited. Her own smile faltered a bit. “What?” she said defensively.

“You expect us,” he said, “to build a twenty-foot ramp before tomorrow?”

Jyn marched up to him, getting as close as she dared. He was almost a head taller than her. “What, are you afraid of hard work?”

“No.” Cassian grinned. “Are you?”

\---

Of course Baze and Chirrut had brought tools of all kinds in their deceptively small sacks: saws and axes, hammers and nails, screws and screwdrivers, even what appeared to be an electric drill the size of a smallish dog, which Baze forbade anyone who wasn’t him from touching.

The group immediately set to work, appropriating logs from the pile and cutting them to length. Jyn sat back by the outcropping at first, sketching out a rough schematic for the ramp. It wasn’t long before, in what seemed to be turning into a habit, Cassian came over to join her. 

“Anything I can do?”

Jyn spared him a single, amused glance before looking back down at her work. “Are you secretly an expert in ramp architecture?”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “Name a structure, I have built it before.”

“Ah,” Jyn said lightly. “I suppose I took you for a soldier or something, not a migrant worker.”

Cassian didn’t reply. Jyn looked up, worried that she had said something wrong, and saw by the deepening creases on his forehead that she had. “Damn, I’m sorry,” she sputtered, “I didn’t mean to assume --”

“I am not a migrant worker,” Cassian said softly, sounding angry and tired and sad all at once. “I never crossed any border. My family has lived in what is now called Arizona farther back than anyone can remember. The border crossed us.” 

Jyn didn’t know what to say, so she surprised herself by simply placing a hand on Cassian’s shoulder. He surprised her by taking that hand in his.

“You’re from Ireland,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You must know the feeling of having your land taken, your people broken.”

Jyn looked down at her notepad, then back up at Cassian, and before she knew it, the words were spilling out. “There was a famine when I was small. _An Gorta Beag_ , the Wee Famine, they called it, because it wasn’t as widespread as the last one and fewer people died. But in my home it wasn’t small at all. My mother died. And my father…” Jyn blinked up at the stars her father had taught her to name. “My father went to work for the British government, said he was going to help our people by helping them, and he sent me to America to live with some second cousin who turned out to be long dead.”

Cassian was still holding her hand. She didn’t mind as much as she expected. He was silent for a long time, but then he looked at her, looked at the mountains of wood around them, looked at their friends sweating under the stars, and said:

“Let’s burn this shit down, yes?”

Jyn grinned. “Yes.”

\--

Once she was satisfied with the plans, Jyn brought them over to the other men. Bodhi beamed at her proudly. Kay, for once, had nothing rude to say. Baze lifted his electric drill and roared it to life, a nearly-manic glint in his eyes. Chirrut, unable to see the plans, offered to go keep watch. Jyn didn’t question it.

To her delight, Kay handed her a hammer and a case of nails. Jyn liked the feel of it in her hand; it felt solid and powerful, and she felt a little more powerful for it. She grabbed an armful of newly-cut planks and set to work.

Cassian, of course, came to work next to her. (She was getting used to the feeling of his body close to hers.) Neither of them talked much, but they shared nails, passed planks back and forth. Occasionally their fingers would brush, and Jyn would pretend not to have noticed when she had, in fact, noticed very much.

At one point, around when the first hints of lavender dawn began creeping over the edge of the eastern horizon, Jyn needed to climb further up the outcropping. As she gripped the wooden scaffolding they had built with one hand and the cold rock with other, she felt Cassian’s hand on her back. It was warmer than the hand of someone who had been in the sky all night had any right to be. She didn’t say anything, but found footholds and began climbing. Cassian kept his hand on her, holding her steady, until she had climbed out of reach. 

When she arrived at her perch, she finally gave herself permission to look out at the view from the top of the mountain. She had to suppress a gasp. Below her, the black mountains and hills lay across the Earth like sleeping giants. Rivers and reservoirs snaked through the valleys, visible only by the starlight reflecting in their depths. The stars were still glowing brightly, barely diminished by the growing strip of light at the edge of the sky. And there, nestled at the base of the behemoth she stood on, was Colorado Springs, twinkling softly like a new constellation. The wind blew past and through Jyn, but for the first time, she didn’t feel cold. 

She tore her eyes away from the view and looked down at Cassian, brushing her fringe out of her face. He was looking at her like she imagined she had looked at the stars.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” she called down, before she could stop herself, because that was a stupid, stupid thing to say. 

Cassian flashed another smile, and looked like he was about to say something. But right as he opened his mouth, the sound of Chirrut scrambling back up to the summit made them both turn.

“They are coming,” Chirrut was yelling over the wind. “The Sheriff’s men!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me if this chapter is underwhelming. I've always been better at beginnings than continuings. But rest assured, the story will continue, and now that I've got a nice cliffhanger-and-rising-action thing going, the next chapter should be more exciting. Thanks for sticking with me!


	3. The Adventure of the Two Collaborators

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bodhi saves the day, twice, and Jyn and Cassian get up to some hijinks.

Jyn scrambled down the outcropping so fast it was more like falling. She landed with a soft thud and took off running without a thought, back down the side of the mountain towards the cog train. It was the only cover for hundreds and hundreds of yards. 

Her lungs burned, the thin cold air barely enough to keep her going. But she ran anyway, hoping. 

She thought she heard another pair of running feet behind her. Were they Cassian’s? Bodhi’s? An officer’s? Just the echoing of her own footfalls? She didn’t know. She didn’t turn around to see. 

She reached the trolley and slid to the ground behind it, spraying red gravel. She curled up against the freezing metal hull, trying to quiet her panting.

She noticed, hundreds of yards below her, Chirrut pulling Baze by the hand. They were somehow already at the tree line. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief when they slipped into the darkness of the forest.

And then Cassian was beside her. She could have cried out in relief, but of course she didn’t. She looked at him, wide-eyed with questions and fear, but he just put a finger to his lips and curled up next to her.

Where were Bodhi and Kay?

Jyn shivered and listened, trying to hear something, anything above the howling winds. For a moment, there was nothing. 

Then she heard Bodhi’s voice, drifting towards her in patches on gusts of wind.

“... really meant nothing by it, Deputy Sheriff Krennic, it’s just that my friend here… routine mining operations earlier today, and he and his colleagues left a few… authorization to use the railway after hours, as you’ll see…”

Jyn, as quietly as she could, began to shift towards the front end of the trolley. Cassian followed her, doing a much better job at being silent than she was. Once she had reached the back of the car, Jyn peered around its edge -- slowly, carefully -- until she could just see five figures standing about thirty yards below the summit.

Oh Bodhi, clever Bodhi, brilliant Bodhi -- he had stopped the officers before they had gotten close enough to see the woodpiles. He was standing, Kay by his side, in front of three officers. The one in the middle wore the Deputy Sheriff’s uniform; he was tall and lanky, with a long face and graying hair under his cap. He was smiling at Bodhi in a way that made Jyn uneasy.

For the first time, she caught a snippet of the Deputy’s oily voice: “Very well, Mr. Rook. My men and I… happy to escort…”

_Oh no._ Bodhi glanced, almost imperceptibly, back at Jyn, held her gaze for a split second, and then turned back to Krennic. He nodded and began to lead the group, slower than he might have, toward the cog train. 

Jyn whirled back toward Cassian. “They’re coming this way,” she hissed. “The deputy wants to ride the cog rail back down with them.”

Cassian’s forehead creased just a bit, and then he nodded curtly. Beckoning to her, he began to crawl very quietly back around the trolley, away from the voices, and Jyn followed. They listened with all their might, moving every time the voices drew nearer. As they got closer and closer to the back of the trolley, Jyn saw that there was a large boulder not far away, and comprehended Cassian’s plan even before he turned to her and gestured towards the hiding place.

Jyn heard Bodhi open the door of the train car. She heard footsteps inside, a few muffled words. She and Cassian waited, barely breathing. They would have seconds, maybe not even that if someone was already at the rear window -- and then the engine roared to life and the trolley bucked once, twice, and rolled slowly away from them. 

Cassian lept towards the boulder and Jyn followed. They reached it in precisely seven strides. 

Cramped together behind the rock, there was nothing they could do but wait for the sound of the cog train to recede. There was no shouting, no squealing of the breaks, and no pounding footsteps of police coming after them, and Jyn supposed that was a good sign. Still, she didn’t let herself breathe or even open her eyes until the chug-chug-chug of the engine was indiscernible from the roar of the wind.

Finally, Jyn opened her eyes. She looked at Cassian, who looked back. Neither of them smiled this time, but the sentiment was the same.

Jyn suddenly registered the cold for the first time in what seemed like ages, and her shivering returned with a vengeance. Cassian, to her surprise, took off his big, furry parka -- revealing another, smaller parka underneath -- and draped the coat over her.

“You sure you don’t need this more than me?” she teased. 

“I believe ‘thank you’ is the customary response,” he replied. His eyes danced.

\--

They stood together at the summit, both silently contemplating the task before them. With Bodhi and Kay headed down the mountain and Chirrut and Baze gone who-knew-where, they had two options:

1 . Finish the ramp by themselves, and hope that the others would return in the morning with the cars full of fuel. 

2\. Abandon the venture and walk back down the mountain.

A single look at each other proved that the latter choice was not on the table.

As they worked, Jyn perched like an eagle on top of the outcropping and Cassian below her, the dawn crept slowly upwards and out. Purple feathers streaked across the sky; the stars faded but didn’t quite disappear. Did they stay visible longer, Jyn wondered as she pounded a nail, the closer you got to the sky?

They worked well together. Eventually, the built portion of the ramp was long enough and stable enough that Jyn could crawl out onto it. Cassian punched the air when it held her weight. Jyn thought that might have been the first time she’d seen him express a discernible feeling, and she stifled a grin. Jubilation looked good on him.

Once, she almost slipped head-first off the end of the ramp. It was still about twelve feet off the ground, and it would have been a nasty if not catastrophic fall. Jyn caught herself, but Cassian had already appeared below, ready to catch her.

“Alright?” he asked, lowering his arms only part of the way.

“Obviously,” she said, with more tenderness than snark in her voice.

\---

They finished the ramp around the time that the rising sun finally chased the last of the stars out of the sky. It ended neatly in a crevice of the woodpile perfect for rolling oil barrels into. Standing, at last, on solid ground and gazing proudly at her -- their -- creation, Jyn had an idea.

She looked up at Cassian, but hesitated upon seeing the confused mixture of pride and apprehension on his face. He was worried, but about what? That the trucks wouldn’t come? That the ramp would collapse? That the blaze wouldn’t be everything he’d dreamed? 

Jyn almost asked him what was wrong. But that would have involved talking about feelings, and that was the last thing she ever wanted to do, so instead she forged ahead and asked, “Do you want to roll down it?”

He blinked down at her. “Down the ramp?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For fun.”

“You will get splinters.”

“Not in your parka, I won’t.”

“You will crash into a tree at the end.”

“Not if you catch me.”

He looked at her, then over at the ramp, then back at her. He smiled faintly. “Fine. But you will pick the splinters out of my parka afterward.”

“Deal.”

Jyn scrambled to the top of the outcropping and lay down on her stomach, trying to remember why she had thought this was a good idea but not, ultimately, caring. Cassian positioned himself at the bottom of the ramp, ready to catch her. He looked very skeptical, or maybe concerned. Jyn decided this would all be worth it if he had fun, just for a second.

“One… two… three!”

She pushed off down the ramp and rolled. It was hard, and the ride was bumpy. But, briefly, Jyn felt like a kid again, rolling down hills in the meadow by her family’s farmhouse. 

She might have laughed out loud.

And then she was in Cassian’s arms, which were very strong, and she was straightening up and his face was right there and she had a lot of thoughts all at once, but before she could parse any of them out, Cassian said softly, “You certainly enjoyed yourself.”

And she smiled at him, at his scratchy-looking stubble and his big brown eyes that were very, very close and said, “Your turn.”

Once Cassian was at the top of the ramp, he looked like he wasn’t sure how he had gotten there or what to do next.

“So, I just… roll down?” he called to her.

Jyn braced herself, privately wondering if she would even be able to stop him. “Yeah,” she called back. “Haven’t you ever rolled down a hill or anything?”

Declining to answer, Cassian pushed off and tumbled down the ramp. For a second, all was well. But then some part of him got turned around, and then he was half somersaulting, half sliding towards Jyn. She dimly registered the thought that she could still catch him, maybe, just before he crashed into her and sent them both flying into a pile of twigs.

Jyn, dazed and with many small pieces of wood poking her uncomfortably, took a moment to realize that Cassian was laughing. She was sort of on top of him and there were twigs in his hair and he was laughing, a throaty chuckle that was rough and warm all at once. And so of course she started laughing too, because they were on top of a mountain and had just finished being complete prats, and he was beautiful, really, and so was his laugh.

Jyn struggled to lift herself onto her elbows and ended up jabbing Cassian in the shoulder, which just made him laugh more. She rolled over so that they were lying side-by-side on the stick pile, and the two of them laughed together until they no longer could. 

Cassian turned his head to look at her. His face was very close again, and the rising sun reflected in his hair. “Now you cannot say,” he murmured, “that I am no fun.”

Jyn felt that warmth in her chest returning, a bit more intense now. “Well,” she muttered back, “you made a valiant effort.”

His eyes crinkled. “You may have to teach me more of your ways.”

Jyn didn’t reply because she had become very distracted by his mouth, which was still curved up in the ghost of a smile. Without thinking -- no, that was a lie, she was thinking very hard about several things, including Cassian’s mouth -- she began to move closer, and she felt rather than saw him doing the same, and that might have been his hand on her waist and her hand on his chest --

And the sound of a rumbling engine broke through the morning air, and they jumped apart. There was a split second of eye contact, a promise, maybe, of things yet to come, and then they both ran to see who it was.

A line of pickup trucks was winding up the mountain road, each loaded with barrels of oil and boxes of coal. The one at the front was nearly at the summit, and as they both watched, a figure leaned out of the passenger-side window and waved at them. 

“Oi there!” Bodhi called up to them. “You’d better have finished that ramp!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will they succeed in lighting the mountain on fire? Will Deputy Sheriff Krennic return? Will Jyn and Cassian cut the crap and do the thing already? Find out in the next thrilling installment!
> 
> (I'm only trying to hype myself up, really.)
> 
> (As always, thank you all for your comments and feedback!)


	4. The Sky is Everywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes burn down the house, so to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Lots of stuff has been happening this week. Anyway, here's the *final chapter.* Hope it doesn't disappoint.

Bodhi had found Baze and Chirrut, as well as what appeared to be the entire Colorado Springs Mining Company.

It was a strange sight: thirty or so men, all coated in coal dust like Kay, trailing between the trucks and the woodpile, carrying barrels of oil effortlessly. Jyn and Bodhi watched from the hood of one of the trucks as the miners stood the barrels and boxes in a straight line behind the ramp. They were like ants, Jyn thought, in their strength and efficiency. 

Her gaze came to rest on Cassian, who was helping Chirrut with a box of coal. “Do you think we should go help?” she asked lightly.

Bodhi snorted. “Let the big strong men handle it. We runts have earned a break.”

“I guess you’re right.” Jyn leaned back against the hood, and Bodhi followed suit, and for several long moments they just watched as white streaks of cloud fluttered across the morning sky.

“Bodhi?” Jyn asked eventually.

“Mm?”

“How did you meet… all of them?”

“Ah, er.” He paused. “At… work.”

Jyn hiked herself up on one elbow, the better to raise one eyebrow skeptically at Bodhi. “You work at the sheriff’s office. And I know these people aren’t officers.”

Bodhi sighed. “No, they’re not.” He watched the clouds carefully as he pondered how to phrase the truth. “They were all… brought in. For things they shouldn’t have been brought in for. All headed for trial, where they would have been convicted, for sure. So I, you know, I would fudge the paperwork before it got to that. Let them off with a warning after one night in lockup. It was… the right thing to do.”

In that moment, Jyn thought, her heart might have burst from the mere contemplation of his goodness. And she could have said something along those lines, but she didn’t, and settled for patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. From the way he smiled at her, though, she knew he had gotten the message.

\---

They were nearly ready, it seemed, in moments. The oil barrels were lined up by the ramp, the boxes of coal were nestled deep in the woodpile. As a final garnish, Chirrut and Baze sprinkled the pile with homemade firecrackers and a powder that they called “red fire.” 

Once everything was set up, Jyn and Bodhi joined the others behind the ramp. Jyn hung back a bit, ready to keep watching for a distance. But Cassian, to her surprise, held his hand out to her.

“You will be our man at the top of the ramp, yes?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. “You are so comfortable up there, after all.”

Jyn smiled, thinking of the stars. She took Cassian’s hand, which was still very warm, and followed him to the outcropping. She climbed up it once more and took her place at the top of the ramp. Cassian followed, stopping on a foothold so that his chest was level with the top of the outcropping, and Kay found a spot just below him. The other men lined themselves up, ready to pass the oil barrels along. And, just like that, they were ready.

Baze and Bodhi circled the woodpile, pouring kerosene and tossing matches. In the chilly wind, many of the flames blew out, but more of them caught, slowly working their way down the branches, eating away at leaves and bark as they went. Where the flames met red fire, they sparked and blazed scarlet.

They all watched in hushed anticipation as the fire grew and spread. Once flames were licking up the sides of the larger branches and the smaller tree trunks, Cassian nodded at Jyn and then gestured down to the men below. Jyn heard a series of grunts as the first oil barrel moved down the line.

The final step was Cassian reaching down to take the barrel from Kay, then heaving it up to her. Jyn helped him lift it the last couple of feet -- God it was so heavy -- and, at last, she had the barrel in front of her. And then she had an idea.

“Hey,” she called down to the men, “does anyone have an old rag or something?”

Jyn was rewarded with several old, coal-stained undershirts, all of them smelly and worn through in places, but perfect for her purposes. Cassian wrinkled his nose as he handed them up to her, but watched intently as she began to tear one into thick strips. She twisted the cap off of the barrel, then wadded one of the strips up and stuffed it in the opening, with a bit trailing out like a tail. Then, feeling like she imagined a mother bird felt upon shoving its baby out of the nest to fly, Jyn tipped the barrel on its side and pushed.

It rolled, clanging and sloshing, and landed squarely on the flaming woodpile. Jyn watched, as if in slow motion, as the rag caught and burned and --

 _BANG!_ The barrel exploded in a white-hot cloud. None of the shrapnel reached them -- she had calculated the safe distance correctly, Jyn thought proudly -- but they all had a perfect view as the fireball set off a chain reaction. It ignited all of the firecrackers in a ten-foot radius, and they crackled and spit and zoomed away into the sky, trailing stardust. Jyn heard herself laughing as she watched them.

She looked down to see Cassian smiling too, his face glowing in the light of the strengthening fire. He met her eyes. “Do you think they saw that, down in the city?” he asked.

Jyn put on her best mischievous grin. “I think we need another.”

Cassian’s eyes twinkled, and he called down to the others, “Another!”

\---

Ten barrels later, her arms aching and her face beginning to feel the heat of the blaze even at her safe distance, Jyn realized that the fire had spread hundreds of feet across the entire woodpile, the entire summit, and the flames had to be at least a hundred feet high at their highest point. The firecrackers were long gone, but the flames were still dyed red.

It was spectacular. It was ridiculous. It was important, Jyn thought, and smiled to herself.

She tore her eyes away from the bonfire to look down at Colorado Springs. She couldn’t see the people standing in the streets and on their rooftops, gaping at the mountain; she couldn’t see the people stopping their work and running out of their buildings to see it; she couldn’t see the cars and carriages stopped in the middle of intersections, their drivers hanging out their windows. But she could imagine all that, and the imagining made her smile. She wondered if Professor Guerrara had stopped working to watch, if only for a minute.

Chirrut’s voice snapped her back to the summit. “What’s that?” he was asking frantically. “That sound, that clanging --”

And then Bodhi was telling them all to hush, and they did, mostly, and they all listened. Jyn couldn’t hear anything from up on the outcropping, but a few seconds of listening later Bodhi yelled, “It’s the police cars, their bells. They’re a ways away yet, but they’re coming.”

There was a mad scramble -- some of the miners ran straight to their trucks and drove off down the mountain road. But Jyn and Cassian made eye contact and she knew they understood each other, and she looked and saw that Bodhi and Baze and Chirrut and Kaye and the miners who had stayed were all on the same page -- and they started moving the remaining barrels as fast as they could.

Jyn didn’t stuff rags into these; she didn’t have time, and anyway, they needed the delay from the fire melting through the caps if they were going to get away without being blown to bits. She rolled them down the ramp one after the other, and they piled at its charred end. By the time she had settled into a rhythm -- lift, tip, roll, lift, tip, roll -- Cassian was saying “last one,” and the barrels were gone.

“Go, go,” she called to Cassian and Kay over the roaring of the fire, and they all scrambled down the outcropping and sprinted to the trucks. The remaining miners had already driven off, leaving only one pickup for Jyn and the rest to pile into. So pile in they did, with Bodhi at the wheel, Kay in the passenger seat, and Jyn, Cassian, Baze, and Chirrut crouched in the open back. Jyn clung to the side of the truck bed with one hand and to Cassian’s hand with the other as Bodhi roared the engine to life and drove, full speed, down the mountain and toward the bells.

A small fleet of police cars emerged from behind the tree line, clanging and spreading out to block their path. The car at front and center bore the deputy sheriff’s insignia, and sure enough, Jyn thought she saw that long, cruel face at the wheel. He drove straight towards them, also at full speed. Bodhi didn’t slow down.

“What are you going to do?” she yelled over the deafening wind towards Bodhi’s open window.

He yelled something back that sounded like “We’re about to find out!”

Jyn turned to watch as Krennic’s car drew closer. She could definitely see his face now, looking grim but also maybe a bit unsure, and Bodhi revved the engine threateningly and held his course steady, and Kay was pounding the dashboard, and Cassian and Chirrut and Baze were yelling encouragement to Bodhi and then Jyn was too, and then Krennic’s car was so close that she could see the whites of his very wide eyes --

And the deputy sheriff swerved. His car and the others sped past them up the mountain, and by the time they had all braked and turned around, the pickup truck had crossed the tree line, all of its inhabitants cheering joyously.

“Do you think Krennic saw that you were driving?” Jyn called to Bodhi.

“I guess I’ll have the answer when I go in to work tomorrow!” he yelled back, laughing, and Jyn couldn’t help but laugh too.

She gripped the side of the pickup bed harder as the truck bumped over the uneven forest ground. She could have watched Cassian, Chirrut, and Baze wheezing in relief forever, but she turned to look at the bonfire, still brightly visible through the trees. 

In fact, she turned just in time to see what must have been the pile of oil barrels finally bursting.

With a monstrous boom, a crimson fireball engulfed the whole summit, and the flames tripled -- quadrupled? quintupled? -- in height. Jyn watched, half in fear and half in delirious awe, as the tower of fire and smoke rose hundreds of feet above them. She found Cassian’s hand again, and squeezed. He squeezed back. Without looking at him -- she doubted that any of them could take their eyes off of the bonfire just then -- she knew that this was what he had been hoping for. Possibly better, even.

\---

Jyn invited the lot of them to her apartment, partly because her building’s roof had an excellent view of the mountain and partly because the police did not know where she lived. She unearthed an only-partly-gone bottle of whiskey from her cupboard, and they all sat on her roof and watched the fire.

Jyn had never seen a volcano erupt, but she imagined that it would have looked something like Pikes Peak that day. The red flames stretched up towards the sky -- about a third again as high as the mountain itself, so almost five hundred feet, she estimated -- and had barely dwindled at all by sunset. Every hour or so, Chirrut asked Baze to tell him about the view again. It made Jyn chuckle to hear Baze’s descriptions grow less and less poetic until he eventually grunted, “Still big. Still red.”

Nearly as fun was watching the people in the streets below. All Independence Day plans had been canceled, it seemed, in favor of standing in the streets and gawking. 

“I bet some of those idiots think it’s the end times,” Kay said at one point.

“Statistically speaking, there has to be a few,” Jyn replied, stifling a whiskey burp. Kay, shockingly, grinned at her, and she passed him the bottle.

Later, as the stars were returning to a sky lit up crimson by the still-blazing fire, Cassian came to sit next to her. Neither of them said anything for a while, just silently passed the bottle back and forth. Jyn had had just enough over the course of the afternoon and evening that she felt a bit warm and content, although that could have been the rousing success of their -- mission, had Bodhi called it last night, a million years ago? And it also could have been Cassian’s presence next to her. Very close to her, in fact. Jyn stared determinedly at the bonfire, glowing like a coal in the darkened purple sky.

“The stars are very beautiful,” Cassian said quietly.

“I thought you weren’t here to look at stars.”

“Who said that? Was it me?”

She looked at him then, and his eyes were laughing, those big brown eyes that she knew, without knowing the details, had seen so many terrible things. But now his eyes were still glowing from looking at the bonfire, at that light that they had conjured up out of the darkness. And he was looking at her like she was made of light, too.

Before their faces could get any closer than they already were, Bodhi stood, stretched, and said a bit too loudly, “Well, chaps, it was an honor and a privilege. But I think I’ll be off now.”

Jyn lept to her feet and hugged him, surprising him and her both. “Thank you for recruiting me,” she murmured in his ear.

“Anytime.”

\---

Once all the others had left, Jyn did something that her landlady would have disapproved of and let Cassian into her apartment. And then she did something that her landlady would have _highly_ disapproved of and pushed him up against the closed door. 

When she kissed him, his lips were soft and warm, and she felt that warmth spread to her chest and her stomach and everywhere, and the whole world glowed with the red light from the mountain.

And when he kissed her back, it felt like fireworks.

\---

On July 5th, 1901, around 9:32 am, Jyn woke up with Cassian’s hair in her face. His head was nestled against her neck and his arm was flung across her chest. She was utterly trapped. She smiled to herself and ran her fingers through his hair.

“Cassian,” she whispered.

He shifted and mumbled something that sounded like “ _Cinco minutos_.” Jyn snorted.

“I was thinking we could make flapjacks together,” she whispered to the top of his head, “but that can’t happen if you’re on top of me.” 

“I’ve never made flapjacks,” he yawned, and he looked up at her, bleary-eyed, and he looked as beautiful as anyone Jyn had ever known.

“Then I’ll teach you my ways,” she said, and he laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and for sticking with me till the end! This was my first fic ever and all your lovely comments have meant so much to me. 
> 
> For the historical-minded among you, here's some sources on the real Pikes Peak bonfire of 1901. Have fun finding out just how fast and loose I played with historical accuracy!  
> https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/07/05/102624973.html?pageNumber=1  
> http://gurukul.american.edu/heintze/Peak.htm  
> http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-badass-ways-your-grandparents-celebrated-4th-july/


End file.
